


ask for me tomorrow

by hegelsholiday



Category: Dreamcatcher (Korea Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pirate, F/F, Magical Realism, More tags to be added, Sirens, questionable life choices, sea creatures that want to love you and protect you and eat you
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-03
Updated: 2019-10-26
Packaged: 2020-10-06 01:09:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20498399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hegelsholiday/pseuds/hegelsholiday
Summary: Yoohyeon has always understood better than most what the sea wants, what it calls for--it's what makes her such an effective navigator and captain. But the siren that's started to haunt her every step with dark eyes and wide smiles, that's something Yoohyeon isn't sure how to deal with at all.





	1. Chapter 1

Yoohyeon doesn’t think much of it at first. She’s always felt the connection with the sea somehow; out on the sea, where there’s nobody for miles around, nobody quite cares about who you are or what you do, and she lives for that. 

(Well, sometimes the queen ups the price on her head, but that’s a different story entirely.) 

Here she can rely on no one but herself and her instincts and her crewmates, painstakingly weathered and wrought into what they are today. 

So when Yoohyeon starts dreaming again, she doesn’t quite realize it at first. 

Dreaming about the sea seems like a natural thing almost; she spends her days with the wind singing her to sleep and the seagulls carrying the sound of longing across dark grey waters. She laughs and drinks with Siyeon and Yoobin and Bora and at night she tries not to think about the man whose head she put a bullet through with the pistol she sleeps with under her pillow. 

It seems like a natural thing, but Yoohyeon hasn’t dreamed since she was a child still nestled in her mother’s arms. 

She mistakes it as waking at first, thinking she’d gotten out of the middle of the night, for a drink of water, why else would the sound of the water below them be so loud in her ears? She doesn’t really remember it, but it must’ve happened, in that split-second where you don’t realize that you’ve woken up and gotten out of bed yet. 

But in dreams, the wind is silent, and after years of hearing it as her constant companion, the silence is stifling. 

The wind speaks, and nobody hears it better than Yoohyeon. It sings in her ear of an oncoming storm that she can still steer clear of, enemy ships moving towards them, enemies that will force her to shoot and kill and feel the blood running down her fingers. 

Siyeon and the others call it a gift, and long ago in her ignorance it would’ve been something Yoohyeon had boasted about too, but she’s learned better since. 

Yoohyeon is very careful these days, leaving offerings to the sea and the wind, one far more benevolent than the other--she’s the wind’s favorite, but that doesn’t mean she can afford to be arrogant. Bloodletting is one way, the gold coins she measures out carefully and tosses aboard, as if the ocean were a wishing well she could pray to for good fortune, are another. The wind brushes past her ear, a gentle caress that tells her she’s done well. 

The rest of the crew look on, but they’ve learned to trust her instincts and quiet the complaints about the waste of loot. 

There are more than enough stories about humans being punished for hubris for her to add to them. 

\---  
Yoohyeon can’t exactly pinpoint when dreaming about the sea had become dreaming about _her_. 

Well, her is a stretch, because Yoohyeon isn’t quite sure what the phantom haunting her dreams is exactly. 

Sometimes her ghost talks to her too, but Yoohyeon can never hear what exactly she’s saying. She’s tried to strain her eyes to see what the other’s mouthing, but there’s always something fogging at the edges of her vision. 

Tonight it’s vivid beyond anything her subconscious has conjured up previously; the colors threaded through the ghost’s hair and threadbare gown are there and completely unmistakable even to her hazy dream-fogged eyes. 

“What do you want from me?” she calls over the sound of the waves. The other woman beckons at her, daring her to come closer, but Yoohyeon has learned enough of the sea to know that she shouldn’t, not even in dreams. 

The ocean never bends to any one man’s will, and the creatures that sailors sing of underneath their depths even more so, but the sailors sing of beauty, and let it never be said that Yoohyeon doesn’t have a weakness for beauty. She’s much like anyone else in that respect. 

She takes a step forward; the dark, suffocating shadows of the other woman’s eyes lure her on, an endless whirlwind that promises --

When Yoohyeon wakes up with sickly sea salt dry on her tongue, she knows something’s wrong before she even opens her eyes. Her feet are unsteady, shaky, as she pulls herself out of bed. 

“Siyeon,” she calls, “Was there some sort of storm last night?” 

Her first mate swings the cabin door open all the way, peering inside at Yoohyeon. “No, everything was pretty calm last night. We’ve hit a stretch of smooth sailing, thankfully.” 

“Oh,” Yoohyeon says, staring at the thick swirls of sand spread out over her cabin floor, spread out carefully in a wide, sweeping circle that couldn’t have been natural even if she’d squinted. It covers practically every inch of the thin wooden panels in a meticulously grotesque sort of art. “That’s odd.” 

_Odd_ isn’t quite the right word for it, but Yoohyeon doesn’t think there’s an exact word for the amount of terrified she feels. 

\---  
Yoohyeon notices other things too, other things that she wouldn’t have noticed, wouldn’t have _bothered_ noticing until the sand and the dreams and the wind yelling, screaming, singing little sweet whispers into her ears. 

First, she loses her pistol one day. She wakes up and her hand goes for the lump under her threadbare pillow she’d learned to sleep comfortably with, but it’s not there, _it’s not there_\--

She claws around her blindly, thinking that she must be still dizzy from sleep and another dream (always another dream), but no, by the time she finishes combing her entire cabin down she knows for certain that it’s not there. 

Yoobin looks with her, searching through the sheets and the mattress and combing below deck with more enthusiasm than Yoohyeon can seem to muster these days, and somehow she knows she’s lost it, even before Bora comes back and tells her they can’t find it anywhere. 

“We can get you a new one, when we land,” Bora tells her, even though all of them know it won’t be the same. Yoohyeon appreciates the gesture anyways. 

It turns up a few days later with the few flopping fish their crew’s managed to catch, smuggled amid careful ropes of netting innocently, like it’s meant to be there. Yoohyeon clutches at the ruined barrell with shaking hands, and tries not to think of the other person’s fingers who must’ve pulled the trigger in her absence. 

Siyeon gives her a once-over and doesn’t bother asking how it might’ve gotten tossed in the sea, but the look she exchanges with Yoobin says something Yoohyeon’s a bit too fragmented to read clearly. 

Yoohyeon sees the signs everywhere, now, signs that make Yoobin crawl into her bed at night and hold her in worry and concern, and Yoohyeon is so very grateful for Yoobin, but it doesn’t work, all it serves to do is make her best friend even more worried about her. 

But for the time being, the dreams stop, Yoohyeon sleeps again, and all she needs is for Yoobin to stay with her, just a little bit longer. 

Yoobin’s always had good luck; for all of Yoohyeon’s supposed natural-born gifts in navigating the seas Yoobin is the one who makes it all possible. 

It’s past dawn when Yoohyeon finally wakes up, and Yoobin’s gone, probably to help Siyeon keep the rest of the crew in line. Yoohyeon would resent not being woken up, but she’s content; it’s the best she’s slept in a while, and she wants to cherish this. 

When she reaches over to pull her thin rag of a blanket closer around her though, her hand meets something slippery, something distinctly not-Yoobin, not-human, not-fabric. 

She sits up, now fully awake, the sheets falling around her bare legs. Spread out on the other side of her is a driftwood-carved figure with seaweed-hair and coral-eyes, draped carefully in a long beaded chain of shells and exotic-looking rocks, some sort of little symbol engraved deep into its thin little chest. 

Yoohyeon scrambles out of bed, tugging on her clothes and digging around for the new, foreign pistol she’d borrowed from Gahyeon, small and reassuring in the palm of her head. She clutches at it tighter even knowing that it won’t be any good against whatever forces of nature have decided she hasn’t yet been punished for any wrongdoings she might’ve committed and approaches the side of her bed. 

The driftwood-doll’s sharp eyes stare deep into her as she shifts it in her hands, carefully sliding it into the corner of her cabin where the clutter will hopefully hide its presence for a while. If there’s one thing she knows, it’s that throwing it overboard would likely be the worst possible mistake she could make in this situation. 

(“I’m fine,” she says to Yoobin later that night, “but you should get some rest below deck. I don’t want to be disturbing your sleep every night.” 

“You’re not disturbing anything,” Yoobin tells her, hands rubbing at her shoulders soothingly, “and besides, you look like you need it.” 

“I’m fine, really,” Yoohyeon says, “just had a rough few days.” 

“Really?” Yoobin has always been too good at reading her. “Listen, Siyeon told me about the sand circles you found the other day; if there’s anything I can do--” 

“It’s nothing,” Yoohyeon says. “I think the sea’s just getting a little irritated. It hasn’t tasted blood for a while.” 

“More than that, though. It’s never scared you like this--to the point where you can’t sleep...Yoohyeon, are you sure you’re alright?” 

_No_. “Yeah, don’t worry about it,” she says, faking a laugh deep in her throat that she doesn’t quite feel at all. “I’ve fixed everything, don’t worry.” 

_Don’t worry_ seems like the only mantra that works these days. Yoohyeon sleeps alone and dreams alone and the woman’s fingers this time are so hauntingly close, and this time, before she wakes up, she can see the thin claws curling on her fingernails. 

But _don’t worry, it’s fine, everything’s fine_ doesn’t seem to work when the doll’s eyes stare back at her from the entrance of the door, all-knowing, all-seeing, and the lingering feeling of the ghost’s eyes won’t come off no matter how hard she scrubs. 

It’s just another thing she’ll have to live with. 

\---  
Yoohyeon’s starting to get used to waking up drenched in sweat, like the thick layer of unremovable dampness that the sea winds have always brought with them and she can’t dry herself all the way, always feeling the cold sweat crawling down her neck. 

Yoohyeon’s so exhausted she can feel it deep within her bones; all she wants is relief, for a steadiness beneath her feet and her life, some rope she can grasp and hold onto, and Yoohyeon doesn’t understand; she’s done everything right this time, surely--

Siyeon rearranges the night shifts schedules again, for her, and Yoohyeon spends her nights with the pistol in her hands and the cartridge under her pillow, because she’s still too cowardly to sleep with a loaded gun inches away from her fingertips. 

But sleeping for Yoohyeon is as good as staying awake the entire night; at least in the waking world she can trust her own senses and her judgment--she doesn’t own her dreams, but who exactly does, she isn’t sure. 

She passes the nights above deck, where constant light of the north star sets her free from the stuffy air of her cabin and the ever-present eyes of the doll. 

The wind whispers warnings against the sails, too soft for Yoohyeon to hear as she leans her head back against the mast, and Yoohyeon is very, very afraid. 

\---  
Finally, Yoohyeon decides that there’s only one way to do this. 

“I’ll watch over our course,” Yoohyeon tells Siyeon the next night. “Don’t worry about it; you get some rest and catch up with Bora.” 

She steers their vessel into safer waters. The wind’s silent again, more of a watchful observer against her shoulder than anything else. Yoohyeon would think this was another dream, but Siyeon’s reassuring hand on her shoulder had felt real, more real than any of her other half-remembered nightmares. 

Yoohyeon thinks she’s crazy when she hears it, that she’s finally gone mad from the constant cycle of nightmare-sail-kill. It’s a splash, loud in the deep, murky waters down below. She focuses on the stars above her, keeping their destination in mind. It’s dangerous to dock these days, what with their faces posted on wanted posters in every major port, but they’re running out of supplies, and Yoohyeon misses land more than she’s ever missed it before. 

There’s another splash, quieter this time; Yoohyeon can almost imagine the ripples forming along the water. She’s crazy, she must be crazy, all of the stories start with _don’t ever indulge your curiosity, if something strange happens, ignore it, ignore it at all costs_\--

She takes her hands off the wheel, satisfied that the winds won’t change for the time being, before leaning over the railing to stare down at the dark depths below. 

“Hey,” Yoohyeon is acutely aware of how loud her breaths are in the casual stillness of the night. “I know you’re there.”


	2. Chapter 2

A splash, off in the distance. Yoohyeon glances outwards, straining her eyes against the thick, enveloping darkness. 

“Hello?” she calls again. There’s no answer. 

“I’m losing my mind again,” she mutters, climbing halfway up the rigging so she can get a better view of their course. They shouldn’t be too off from land now, and the likelihood of meeting company on the seas is much higher. Her hand goes to the cold handle of her pistol, trembling slightly as she slides it out of her belt and aims it somewhere in the distance

“Hey,” a woman’s disembodied voice sounds, far closer to the railing than Yoohyeon had expected or counted on. Yoohyeon startles, unease prickling at the back of her neck, before she glances down again. A head pokes out over the waves, dark with shadows, with eyes that stare back at her, uncomfortably close. 

Somehow, she isn’t as surprised as she should be that the woman is hauntingly familiar. Yoohyeon learned how these things go a long time ago, but those were stories, things that happened to _other_ people. Now, staring at a sea creature whose elongated limbs and too-sharp teeth glint, ominous, in the moonlight, Yoohyeon doesn’t quite know what to do. 

She tucks her weapon away shakily. There are no stories about sailors who tried to use mortal weapons against the children of the sea, and Yoohyeon isn’t particularly willing to go down as the first and last cautionary tale either. 

“I know you,” she says, in words that are far bolder than she feels. 

“So do I,” the other says. 

Yoohyeon’s breaths come out in shallow gasps, one at a time as she eases herself down the rigging. 

“What’s your name, lovely?” the not quite woman in the waters asks. 

“It’s captain,” she says. Not a lie, exactly. Names are inventions in the end, self-assigned or otherwise, identifiers that only gain meaning under the approval of others. 

Giving a child of the sea her name is a mistake Yoohyeon won’t make. 

The other laughs. “That’s hardly a name.” 

“It’s my name,” she says. 

“Well, I’ll tell you mine. As a gesture of good faith, perhaps.” 

_I don’t need your good faith_ Yoohyeon wants to say, but endless sleepless nights have already worked out that maybe she does, just a little bit. 

“It’s Minji,” the creature says. She smiles. Her canines are razor sharp white, cold industrial needles all lined in a row. Yoohyeon shudders involuntarily looking at them. 

“That’s a nice name,” she says. It is, really. She wonders if it’s her real name. 

“It functions,” Minji says dismissively. “And yours?” 

“Currently has a million dollar price on it.” 

Minji gives her wide-toothed grin. “I figured. You always leave such nice sacrifices.” 

“You remember which ones are mine?” 

“What’s that thing you humans say? The closest way to a girl’s heart is through her stomach.” 

“Oh.” Yoohyeon thinks she might’ve anticipated that particular unpleasant image, but the thought of what happens to her victim’s corpses is something she doesn’t need to think about. 

“Can you really judge me for my nature?” Minji says. “You don’t blame a wolf for eating a sheep; you merely protect your sheep better. If unsuspecting humans wander into my waters and don’t make the proper attempts to pay homage, it’s hardly my fault.” 

“They don’t know any better,” Yoohyeon says. 

“No,” Minji agrees. “They really don’t.” 

“Then--” she starts, before thinking better of it. Minji is watching her with the same unblinking steadiness of the seaweed-haired doll in her room, and Yoohyeon shudders at the connection there. 

“Their lives are still mine,” Minji says. “I live on sustenance, just the same as you do, beautiful.” 

“And are you satisfied now?” Yoohyeon asks. Minji smiles widely at that, a jagged thing that accompanies the finger beckoning her forward. 

“Why don’t you see for yourself?” 

Yoohyeon laughs, a little shaky. “I’d rather not--” 

“The water’s warm, even by human standards.” Minji’s eyes are dark and wide enough to swallow a man alive, but the way she tosses her hair is so incredibly mesmerizing. The moonlight stretches in ripples across her skin, an ethereal glow that wraps her in a shifting mosaic of lights and shadows. Yoohyeon almost doesn’t notice herself taking a step forward. 

“I don’t think--I should--” She’s leaning against the railing by now, slips her arms off of it so they hang down, so that the woman in the waters could reach up and drag her down if she wanted to. It’s an irrational thought. Minji’s arms are no different from that of a human’s. 

“What’s wrong?” she says softly. She cocks her head to the side. Like it’s a genuine question. As if Yoohyeon’s heart isn’t beating loud enough that both of them can probably hear it. 

Everything about this is wrong. 

“If I come with you for a while,” she says, “will you leave the rest of the crew members alone?” 

Minji tilts her head back a little so that Yoohyeon stares directly at her. “I have no interest in the rest of your ship.” 

The feeling of relief that should be there isn’t. It’s empty. Yoohyeon puts one leg over the railing, looking down at the water beneath her. Wonders how large the impact will be from this distance, without any sort of ladder.

She thinks she must be particularly stupid for doing this. None of the others have shown signs that they’ve been affected. But Yoohyeon looks down again at Minji’s encouraging smile, a little sharp around the edges but warm and welcoming all the same, and thinks that it can’t be that bad right? Just a little--

“Yoohyeon,” Yoobin’s voice calls. It’s softer than normal. Dulled with sleep, but unmistakably Yoobin’s. “What are you doing?” 

Yoohyeon jolts. She feels like a marionette whose strings have been cut, the sudden release of tension from her spine is too rapid. Too quick for the stiffness in her limbs to dissipate all the way. 

“I--” she looks down again, at the water. The water she had very nearly thrown herself into. Nut Minji’s disappeared into the water as quickly as she’d appeared, nothing but what might be a thin strand of dark hair for Yoohyeon to squint at and wonder if she’s well and truly snapped. “I don’t know. I thought I saw something.” 

“I heard voices,” Yoobin says. Her face is soft with concern. Yoohyeon hates to make her worried. She could tell her best friend. Could tell her about the unearthly sea creature who haunts her. She won’t though. Yoobin might have good luck, luck enough for daggers to miss her and the winds to blow them towards land when they need them, but this isn’t something Yoohyeon will risk. 

“It’s nothing,” she says. Yoobin doesn’t look convinced, but she drops it. Any other day Yoohyeon would’ve been thankful for how Yoobin is, how willing she is to let Yoohyeon come to her on her own terms. Any other day Yoohyeon wouldn’t be leaning over the railing looking for something half out of her own imagination. “You should sleep; I think your shift is later tonight.” 

After Yoobin leaves, Yoohyeon's sleep-strained eyes search the waves below her for any sign of Minji coming back, and by the time Bora taps her on the shoulder to signal her shift is over, Yoohyeon's already drifted off, leaning dangerously far over the railing to catch another trace of the creature shadowing her as of late. 

\---  
“Yoohyeon, is this yours?” greets her when she wakes up the next morning, pleasantly well-rested. She’s half-convinced she’d had another nightmare falling asleep on the railing, but other than that the rest of the night passes relatively uneventful. 

Siyeon’s holding up a shell bracelet, a string of pretty pink and purple hues in the sunlight. Yoohyeon squints, wondering if she’s seeing things again. 

“No,” she says slowly. “Maybe it’s one of the crew members’? It looks like it could be something someone bought at one of the port towns.” 

Siyeon shakes her head. “Already asked around. Nobody said it was theirs.” She takes the bracelet from Siyeon shakily, turning the strung up beads and shells underneath her fingers. 

“Yeah.” She doesn’t know where she finds the words from--somewhere that isn’t caught up in the smoothness of the bracelet under her fingers, somewhere that’s forgotten the woman who haunts the waters. “It--it’s mine.” 

Siyeon looks like she’s about to add something else, but Bora shouts at her from on top of the rigging, swinging with only one hand tugging loosely at the rope. She mutters something under her breath about dangerous idiots and walks away, leaving Yoohyeon to turn the bracelet over in her hand. 

The seaweed hair on the doll has dried into stringy, wispy strands when it greets her, sitting atop the small bedside table. It had been leaning against one leg of the bed when she’d left this morning. 

Yoohyeon swallows quietly, before setting the bracelet next to it, careful not to look too closely into the bright coral-red eyes. 

“Did you leave this?” she asks. There is no wind to carry her words here, but she has a feeling that Minji will hear her all the same. The words stick a little in her throat at the thought of that. At the thought of Minji watching, still. “I don’t think I quite know what it means. I don’t want to offend you at all.” 

There’s no response, and Yoohyeon lets out a quick breath. She gingerly picks up the doll, holding it away from herself to deposit it back into the corner of the room. Some place where it won’t be the first thing she sees when she looks up. 

\---  
If Yoohyeon avoids being alone as much as possible for the next few days, then Yoobin and the others don’t say anything. Gahyeon doesn’t comment that it isn’t her shift when Yoohyeon slips out of her cabin at night to chart the stars with her. 

“I couldn’t sleep,” she says, to fill the silence. Gahyeon pats at the spot next to her on the floor of the deck wordlessly. 

She wants to see land again. Feel the earth beneath her feet instead of the flimsy wooden planks rocking against the ocean--the only thing keeping her and the rest of the members on board from drowning six feet under. Sometimes she thinks about how easily the sea could swallow them all in its ever-consuming vortex, how easily creaking wood and flapping sails would break if they provoked the sea enough. 

Their ship moves agonizingly slow under minimal wind speed, and Yoohyeon wonders where her old companion has gone. Off to brighter, greener patches of the sea, perhaps. Patches where sirens don’t prey on unsuspecting and suspecting sailors. 

She thinks if she just holds on a little longer, that it’ll all be over. They can’t stick on land for too long, not with the bounty on their heads, but the sea is vast and untamed, but surely even its children have limits to how far they can travel. 

She hasn’t dreamed of Minji for the past three days. Somehow, she doubts that’s a positive sign. 

\---  
Minji’s head is bobbing gently above the waves when Gahyeon goes below deck for the night. Yoohyeon catches it out of the corner of her eye as she’s rolling up their well-worn navigation charts, a flash of pale ethereal flesh against the quiet lapping of the waves. 

“You came back,” she says. Yoohyeon isn’t quite sure what to make of the uncomfortable feeling in her chest, equal parts relief and disappointment. 

“Sorry,” Minji says. There seems to be a genuine undertone of apology in her voice, but after their last encounter Yoohyeon doesn’t trust herself to read the situation properly. “I had to cut our last conversation short.” 

“Don’t worry about it,” she says. “I wasn’t aware that sea-children observed human standards of politeness.” It’s meant to be an empty comment, something lighter for her to try and ignore the way Minji is staring at her, but it comes out far, far more impudent than she’d intended.

To her surprise, Minji only laughs, canines bright, white polished. Her lips are very, very red, Yoohyeon notices. “Our kind value politeness and courtesy very much, don’t worry.”

“A relief to hear,” she says, a little dry. Certainly, Minji hasn’t exactly been rude. Out of habit, her hand twitches for the pistol at her belt, clutching at the empty sense of comfort. Of safety. 

Minji’s eyes crawl across her and follow her hands. “Ah, I should probably apologize for damaging your weapon,” she says. 

“It’s fine,” Yoohyeon says. She’d liked that pistol. 

“I wanted to hold it,” the other continues. “You relied on it so much; I wanted to see what it would be like to hold it like you did.” 

“How did you know—“

“You should guard your dreams more carefully, dear. Anyone can walk into them.” 

“And how do I do that?” 

“That would be telling, wouldn’t it?” Minji winks at her, a forced sort of thing that contorts half her unnaturally pale face. It looks like something imitated and then practiced copiously in front of a mirror, but the other seems almost proud of it. 

“Alright,” Yoohyeon says. “Don’t tell me.” 

“I could tell you,” Minji says. 

“But--?”

“You’d have to pay for it.” 

That’s always the catch, isn’t it?

“Maybe not today,” she says, stifling the nervous laugh bubbling in her chest. “I doubt I could afford the price.” 

Minji hums, twirling a strand of wet hair idly, before clasping her hands together earnestly. “Did you get the bracelet? I left it some place where I thought you would find it.” 

“Yes,” she says, “I did. It was very--” She searches for the right word. “Lovely.” 

“Good,” the sea-child beams. She hardly seems threatening from this angle. Her cheeks scrunch up into a genuine sort of happiness, joy, that Yoohyeon has found satisfaction in her gifts, and if only for a moment, Yoohyeon loses herself in that too. She lets herself smile back, finally tearing her hand away from the handle of the pistol. “I made it myself, you know.” 

“Did you?” she says. It’s almost flattering, really. Like she’s being slowly courted to the dinner table by a particularly alluring predator. A predator with sharp eyes and pale curves and long seawater tresses. 

“Yes. I’m glad you liked it; some of the shells are harder to find in these parts.”

“Do you live around the waters here then?” 

“Oh, you know,” Minji affects a shrug. “I go wherever my heart takes me.” 

Her accompanying smile, yet again so unnervingly earnest, like she genuinely wants Yoohyeon to like her, is what follows Yoohyeon to sleep when she turns in for the night. 

\---  
“There’s an incoming ship,” Yoohyeon says to Yoobin, “Starboard. They’re a merchant ship; they likely won’t be heavily armed, although these days with the new royal decrees who knows if they’ll have an armed escort or not. Make sure we can withstand some cannon fire.” 

The wind whips past her ear and curls itself through the hastily unraveled sails. Behind her, Bora is itching with nervous excitement, fiddling with the sword at her side. It’s been a while. 

When the ship finally comes into view, Yoohyeon almost wants to laugh. It’s alone, unaccompanied, a small little thing puffing away in the clear waters of the ocean. After weeks on end of nothing but sickly salt air and the sharp smiles of a not-woman haunting her steps, this seems too easy. Wrong, almost, to raid such a defenseless ship. 

“Hey,” she makes sure to affect her stance with a little more swagger, a little more arrogance. The finger around the trigger of her pistol twitches slightly. “We’re not looking for anything much, just your cargo. You know how these things work.” Her ever present companion blows the words towards the captain, fidgeting on the opposite deck. 

The response on the other side is muffled. The wind carries it over to her ear in fragments, but the refusal in the words is clear. The captain raises his arm, shouting orders to his men, before he looks directly at her and spits in her direction. 

She shoots the captain directly through the forehead. He never even got to fire his own shot. 

The rest of it is a thick haze, the kind that Yoohyeon moves through in these moments, where she’s here and things are happening, but nothing really registers until afterwards when the guilt starts to sink in. The pistol in her hand is a steady weight, pointing her forwards towards their destination. Yoobin’s moving at her side. Bora and Siyeon are already lashing out with the ropes, tugging the other ship towards them. 

The ship’s clearly understaffed, even for its small size, and when Yoohyeon fires her gun in the air most of its crew willingly put down their weapons, wooden clubs and axes and small miscellaneous things that reveal just how unprepared they are. She’s starting to think it’s far, far too easy until somebody clocks her in the back of her head hard enough that she can’t quite tell where she’s going and she’s falling down down down over the railing in a dizzy backwards stumble. 

Yoohyeon catches a glimpse of the sky, bright and blue and thinks this isn’t such a bad way to die before she hits the water and can’t quite jumble her thoughts together again. The water seems to wake her up a little, and she swims weakly towards the surface, the pain in the back of her head spiking sharply the closer she gets towards the light. 

She looks downwards once and thinks she sees eyes in the darkness, watching her, always watching her, of course she is, but it’s so quick and Yoohyeon is so dizzy that she thinks she could have imagined it. 

There’s a point where she’s floating, almost, where the burning in her lungs and the ache in her head is gone, a mild sort of serenity just before she reaches the light of the surface where Yoohyeon feels warm and enveloped and some part of her is whispering _home, home_, and then somebody’s hands grasp hers and pull her back onboard, and she resurfaces gasping. 

Yoobin hovers over her wordlessly, wringing the water out of her hair and asking her if she’s alright through the hands on her shoulders. The back of her head prickles, and when she pulls her fingers away they’re trailing scarlet. Fuck. She’d been too careless. 

“Where are--?” Yoohyeon looks around. She’s back on their ship, and Siyeon and Gahyeon are already cutting the ropes loose from the merchant’s, letting it float its way back to land. “That’s it?” she manages. 

“There wasn’t much,” Bora says, startling her as she combs through Yoohyeon’s hair to look at the wound. “And you--well, you were under there for a long time.” 

“By the time we dealt with the rest of the crew and you hadn’t come up, we thought--” Yoobin trails off. There’s guilt in her best friend’s face that shouldn’t be there at all, and Yoohyeon pulls her into a quick hug. 

“I’m fine,” she says. “Besides the possible concussion.” 

“That’s the thing,” Bora says. The usual manic energy in her face is gone, replaced by a solemnity that doesn’t sit right with Yoohyeon. “Any other person would’ve drowned, with the amount of time you spent underwater.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Minji honey doing your best to be (un)intentionally creepy is not how you pick up girls. 
> 
> also deja vu is just. amazing. fuck. I'm too inarticulate to express just. My sheer love for this song. handong's little twirl during her parts. (but actually just the whole choreo gah.) the entire mv storyline. my weakness for epic medieval lesbians. okay excuse me I'm going to go flail bye.


	3. Chapter 3

Yoohyeon retires early to her cabin that night, hands sticky with sea water that she can’t help imagine as a thicker, darker liquid. For once the doll hasn’t moved from its corner, and Yoohyeon thanks the world for small blessings.

“Did you save me?” she asks. She makes sure not to direct the question at the doll. She aims it at the ceiling, instead, plain, unpainted oaken wood. Solid. Grounding. “Why did you save me? I thought all your kind wanted was to lure humans to their death.” 

Suddenly Yoohyeon feels so dirty. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I don’t know what you want from me.” a pause. “Why are you haunting me? What did I do wrong?” 

Predictably, comfortably so, perhaps, there’s no answer. The doll stares unblinkingly back at her as Yoohyeon turns the shell bracelet over in her hands. Yoohyeon can’t help but find herself thinking that the level of care put into it is beyond the capability of human craftsmanship. 

The sound of the door opening startles her, and for a moment the red of her dreams flashes through to reality and she thinks that Minji has finally grown tired of waiting and crawled aboard the ship. But it’s Yoobin. Just kind, careworn Yoobin who knows her too well to just leave her alone after a raid. 

“Are you okay?” she asks. Yoohyeon doesn’t respond, merely buries her head into Yoobin’s shoulder. In a way, Yoohyeon _knows_ that Yoobin needs this just as much as her. Needs the reassurance that Yoohyeon doesn’t blame her for anything, even if Yoobin will never say any of this out loud. It’s okay. The way Yoobin’s arms wrap around her tightly, protectively, are worth more than words. 

“Now that you’re here, yes,” she says. 

“Don’t ruin the moment,” Yoobin says, somewhere into her hair. “I was so worried about you. Actually, I’m still worried about you. You haven’t been well--you lately.” 

Yoohyeon smiles softly. She thinks briefly of Minji, and the man she had shot in cold blood today, for her crew’s favor. For the sea’s favor. But Yoobin is here, now, and that’s all that matters in the moment. “Yeah,” she says. And for the first time since the deep waters had began haunting her dreams Yoohyeon feels oddly free, relaxed. “I really haven’t been.” It feels so good to say the words, hear her own mouth speak them for somebody else’s ears. 

Yoobin nods. And this is what Yoohyeon loves about Yoobin--that she doesn’t press any further. The way her best friend moves through the world is deliberate, thought-out, enough to put anyone at ease. “Talk about it when you’re ready,” she says, “but you’re not going to kick me out tonight.” 

And Yoohyeon, Yoohyeon should know better, but she’s nearly drowned today and added another nameless name to the list of people she’ll think about for the rest of her life. She’s so tired, and Yoobin has a way of making everything better. So she slides the doll under her bed when Yoobin isn’t looking and tries to relax. Tries to find the same wonder and sense of protectiveness she’d found in the sea long ago. 

\---  
The port city of Mingzhou is thick and sweltering when they finally dock in a small, discrete portion of the harbor. They’d long since switched out the distinctive crescent moon flag and stowed away any signs of suspicious activity, so Yoohyeon clutches any lingering sense of nervousness closer to her chest. She lets herself breathe in the scent of fish and smoke, close enough to home that if Yoohyeon closes her eyes it seems like she’s never left. 

Docking in Mingzhou is risky--foolhardy, maybe. Just across the sea, the price on their head is high enough that anyone looking for an opportunity would be keeping a wary eye out for them. Privately, Yoohyeon thinks they haven’t done enough to warrant such a high price--Gahyeon had suggested once, over a few cups of celebratory soju, that it might be because they were women. All of them had laughed at the absurdity then. 

Yoobin doesn’t usually insist too much, because she knows Yoohyeon as much as Yoohyeon knows her, but this time she enlists Siyeon to try to bully Yoohyeon into staying. And any other time she might’ve allowed herself to comply too, because the hastily bandaged wound still stings like hell, and the less of their crew members go out at a time, the less likely they are to draw attention. 

Siyeon says much the same. “At this point, it’s best not to push our luck too much. Your face and likeness may very well have crossed the sea by now.” 

“My face, and _our_ faces,” she says. “I’m not the only one taking risks every time we dock. And I know we’re all going a little stir-crazy on board.” 

Siyeon purses her lips and Yoobin fusses at her bandages. “I’m fine,” she says, hugging Yoobin’s arm closer to her chest. She feels like she’s been saying that without meaning it too much lately. “Really. I’m just dying to eat something that isn’t hard and salted for once.” 

All of them crack a smile at that. “Okay,” Siyeon says. She doesn’t sound too surprised that their attempts to get Yoohyeon to stay have failed. “You guys can go out first. Bora and I will restock and head out when you return.”

Yoohyeon shakes her head. “You’ve worked hard enough as it is. You two take as long as you want; I’ll stay behind.” 

“Go.” Siyeon pushes her lightly. “Plus you know me and Bora will take too long trying to eat our way through the city.” 

Yoobin rolls her eyes. “We’ll make sure to bring something back for you two.” 

\---  
Away from the sea, with the borrowed pistol strapped to her thigh, Yoohyeon feels bold, confident. Everything on land is familiar, the threats are known, avoidable, escapable (<strike>killable</strike>). There are no eldritch mermaids who smile too wide and know too much here to haunt her, demand from her things that Yoohyeon isn’t sure she even has to give. Here, instead, there are only mildly unreasonable prices and empty stomachs to deal with. 

“One copper for three of the dough twists,” she tells the old lady at the stall. 

The seller, hunched over a steaming, half-open stove, shakes her head. “I have a family to feed, ma’am. One copper is too little. These are worth at least three.” 

Yoohyeon opens her mouth, wondering how low she can haggle the price without seeming unreasonable herself, when Yoobin reaches over and grabs her arm. 

“On your right.” Yoobin says in her ear. “Don’t turn around too suddenly.” Out of the corner of her eye, Yoohyeon sees the official, gleaming bright lapels in the sun. Shit. 

“No need to argue about money dear,” Yoobin says louder. She’s in full gentleman mode today, slipping into her role easily, and they’re at a distance where none of them will be able to get a good shot in if things go wrong. She pats her shoulder, and Yoohyeon abruptly remembers the stall owner standing in front of them. “I’ll pay for it.” 

“Awww,” she says, covering a half-faked giggle with one hand and clutching tighter onto Yoobin’s arm. “That’s so sweet of you.” A quick, shaded glance shows that Gahyeon is a few stalls ahead of them, face completely hidden by the fall of her hair as she leans forwards. 

“You two make such a nice pair,” the old lady cooes at them. “It’s good to see all you young lovers traipsing about sometimes.” 

Yoohyeon laughs, a little stilted, but nonetheless a little flattered. Yoobin plays the role of doting husband with a sort of ease that Yoohyeon would envy if she didn’t admire it so much--the easy way she can fit in as a male through a few strategic cuts and ties. Yoohyeon herself had wrapped her hair in a woolen shawl before going out, but the way the sweat is now trickling down the back of her neck at the thick afternoon humidity is making her regret that decision. 

Yoobin pays for the food, handing one over to Gahyeon. The city guard Yoobin had spotted is gone, but Yoohyeon doesn’t feel at ease at all. 

“You need to relax,” Gahyeon tells her quietly. The convenient thing about marketplaces is how loud they are--there are crowds of people all vying for attention, to attract new customers, buyers, patrons--and here small indiscretions like this go unnoticed. “Nothing’s going to happen.” 

“Yeah,” she says. She hadn’t realized exactly when she’d become so tense, but now that Yoohyeon lets the hand on her shoulder draw the stiffness out of her spine, she realizes she’s still on edge. “Yeah, you’re right.” 

“Let’s have some fun,” Gahyeon says. “Not worry about anything for a while.” 

“Yeah,” Yoohyeon says. She wills her fingers to uncurl from her sides where, logically, she knows the pistol must be. “Yeah, sure.” 

\---  
Gahyeon’s idea of fun turns out to be a small, out-of-the-way fortune telling booth in one of the quieter parts of the port. The walls here are cracked and overgrown with curling vines, and the tarp Yoohyeon pulls above her so they can get in is made of scratchy straw. 

“I know Siyeon and Bora came here last time.” Oh yeah, Yoohyeon remembers that. They’d come back to the ship giggling and blushing like schoolgirls, and Gahyeon had only half-jokingly asked them if they were drunk. “Anyway, Siyeon said it was a pretty interesting experience, and I thought since we missed out last time, we might as well--” 

Yoohyeon makes a noise in the back of her throat, some mix of curiosity and unease. Even she isn’t sure which is which. Let the spirits guide you to your destiny is written in bold, dark strokes above their heads. Well, at least the calligraphy here is stellar. The rest of the place is drenched in incense, and the thick red drapery isn’t really helping the already sweltering heat. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Yoobin and Gahyeon exchanging glances. 

“Oh I see,” she says. “This is a conspiracy.” 

Gahyeon crosses her arms. “It’s not. You’re so tense these days--like you’re waiting for something to happen. And well, sometimes a little bit of foresight helps.” 

It could also make things a lot worse. “What if,” Yoohyeon pauses, passing her tongue over the roof of her mouth. “What if I don’t want to know?” _What if I think I already know and I’m scared?_

“It can’t be that bad,” Gahyeon says. “from what I heard from Siyeon, it’s all happy stuff. Good fortune and things to look forward to. We all need some reassurance of good things in the future at some point, you know?” 

“I don’t know,” Yoohyeon says. Spirits or otherwise, it seems wrong to do this. Like the stories they were told as children about arrogant men who tried to control their future, their fate, and went mad doing so. 

“I’ll go first,” Yoobin says. “So you can check for sure that there’s nothing wrong.” When Yoohyeon thinks about it, maybe she has been worrying too much. She’s been on edge for so long that trying to slowly ease her way off of it is difficult. 

“Yeah, okay,” she says. The fortune teller has emerged from the back of wherever-this-is by now, and Yoohyeon would feel rude just walking out now. And it would be foolish of them to separate. 

“You ladies here to get your fortunes told?” the lady asks. She’s not the kind of kindly-old-woman types that Yoohyeon has grown to expect offering services and products on the streets of Mingzhou--the hair bunched up hastily up in a messy knot is thick, black, hardly a trace of white in there, and she moves with an overwhelming sense of grace. 

Yoobin stiffens slightly. It’s not that Yoobin fools everybody with a masculine act, but Yoohyeon has always had an unshakeable faith in Gahyeon’s glamors, applied like thin slip across a person’s face. Illusions spun out of water and clay that work miracles simply due to how willing people are to see what they want to. They hadn’t taken any risks this time. 

“Yeah,” Yoobin says, stepping forwards. She feels the familiar sense of unease prickle at her fingertips, urging her to do something, but Yoohyeon bites down harshly on it. There’s nothing wrong here. 

“You have strong hands,” the fortune teller says, studying Yoobin’s palms with a sort of intensity that makes Yoohyeon uncomfortable just watching her. “You should live long, make people happy, with these hands.” 

The incense is starting to give her a headache, so she lets herself lean against the wall, watching the fortune teller whisper quietly in Yoobin’s ear. She studies the folktale heroes plastered onto the walls, on the doors opened on the inside, meant to ward off evil spirits. 

Maybe, she thinks wryly, they should invest in some supernatural protection charms. She wonders if Minji would be frightened by a red-faced caricature swinging a sword twice his height. 

“What about you, dear?” The sound of the fortune teller’s voice, louder now over the lull of heat and incense, brings her out of her thoughts. Yoohyeon looks up, takes in the carefully neutral smile on Yoobin’s face and the relaxed expression on Gahyeon’s. It couldn’t be that bad then.

She thinks she waits a little too long before presenting her hands, fingers outstretched, palms up. As the fortune teller hums over her palms, it feels too much like waiting for a judgment, some sort of absolution. Yoohyeon isn’t sure what exactly. 

“What--” she wets her lips carefully. The reality is that Yoohyeon isn’t even sure she wants to know what waits for her. “What do you think?” 

The lady hums lightly. “Do you often look at the stars at night?” Yoohyeon frowns. 

“Yes.” In nights when she was the only one awake, she used to lie down straight on the deck and watch the stars pass through the slits of the night sky, a thousand gleaming lanterns in the distance. 

“You should follow them,” she says. “Let them guide you.” 

Yoohyeon snorts quietly. All her life, she has followed the stars, across the sea, but she has never been quite sure of where the end will be. 

“You have a gift,” the lady continues. “Spirits do not often grant these sorts of connections to humans who have not yet earned them. The doorway between our world and theirs is often not as difficult to pass as most people think.” 

“I don’t think I understand what you’re trying to say,” she says carefully. And really, she doesn’t. She’s on the verge of questioning whether the scent of incense has driven her crazy and allowed her to be scammed by some faux-mystic. 

“You keep running from the wrong things,” the woman says. “You’re afraid of stopping, letting them catch up to you. You’re afraid of so many things. Yet, I can say that I do not yet have the authority to say where that will lead you.” Yoohyeon looks up. 

The woman’s eyes are so wide and dark and so much like Minji’s for a second that she almost recoils completely, tugging her hands out of the fortune teller’s grasp. 

She barely manages a polite thank you, pushing Gahyeon forwards as she retreats towards the door. Yoobin looks at her, questioning, concerned, but Yoohyeon waves her off shakily. 

“I’m going to step outside for a moment,” she says. “We should probably head back after this anyway.” 

\---  
Stepping out into the open air, where the heat is a little more bearable, lets Yoohyeon clear her head a little. She breathes. In. Out. 

“Alright there?” 

When Yoohyeon opens her eyes again, there’s another woman standing in front of her, dressed modestly, not particularly flashy or ragged. She can feel her rampant paranoia simmer within her, wondering where she’d come from, when she hadn’t heard anyone turn into this corner of the street. 

“Yeah,” she says. “I’m fine.”

“I couldn’t help but notice--” the woman nods at the tarp of the fortune teller’s booth. “Back there, you seemed really nervous.”

Yoohyeon raises an eyebrow. There hadn’t been another person in the room with them. “You are…?” 

“Handong,” the other says. “Not quite a local, but I come here on occasion.” 

“I didn’t see you back there,” Yoohyeon says. she frowns at Handong quizzically. Takes in the softness of her face and the subtle edges to the other girl’s eyes. She tries to recall what went on in the fortune teller’s booth, beyond the overpowering smell of incense and the smothering heat. Even in hindsight, Yoohyeon can’t believe none of them had seen another person in the room, much less one leaving it. 

Handong shrugs. “People see what they choose to see,” she says. “I just blend in.” 

Yoohyeon feels the fingers on her weapon loosen a little bit. “That’s a useful skill to have,” she says carefully.

Handong smiles. “Very useful.” She pauses meaningfully. Yoohyeon waits. “Earlier, I happened to see you at the docks. I couldn’t help but notice--anyway, how small your crew is, for a ship of that size.” 

Yoohyeon stiffens. Did she-- “Yeah,” she says slowly. “But our crew manages.” 

“Still,” Handong says. “I don’t think running a piracy outfit with only five members is very easy.” 

She barely registers the roar in her ears, before she’s drawing her pistol, pointed straight at Handong’s forehead. “How did you know?” 

“The artists they sent to replicate your likeness didn’t do too good of a job,” Handong says instead. She doesn’t sound too phased at the weapon pointing at her head, but Yoohyeon has been in this business long enough to pick up on the way her eyes flicker towards Yoohyeon’s finger on the trigger. “but I suppose I’m somewhat of a fan. I admire you and your crew. Or envy, Take your pick.” 

“I suppose I should thank you for the compliment,” she says. The gun in her hand does not waver. 

Handong smiles, sharp and jagged and bare. “Don’t. There’s no use for thank yous given by wanted pirates.”

Yoohyeon glances around. The part of town they’re in is utterly deserted, but she doesn’t want to trust their luck. 

“What would it take for you to accept me on board as a crew member?” Handong asks offhandedly. 

Of course. Yoohyeon could’ve guessed that, even if not for the exact reason. 

She breathes a little easier, slowly lowering the gun. The thing is, Handong’s not wrong. Their extremely limited crew size means that they have to be careful about which ships they raid, which areas they sail in. After all, they aren’t exactly the only people who turned to piracy to make a quick fortune. And well, Handong doesn’t seem quite like someone who would be a spy or paid informant. “Won’t anyone miss you here?” 

Handong smiles. It doesn’t quite reach her eyes. “Look for me, yes. Miss me, no.” 

“Okay,” Yoohyeon says. Something about the bitterness in those words makes her think more seriously about this girl’s offer. and well, Yoohyeon’s always been too soft, for a supposed bloodlust driven pirate, and the truth is, whatever Handong wants to leave here, she wants to help. More than anything, Yoohyeon wants to help. “Okay.” 

Handong’s smile unfurls, a genuine burst of happiness that makes something in Yoohyeon ache. She wonders how she could have ever considered her face inherently sinister. Inherently threatening. 

As Yoohyeon slots her pistol away completely, she can’t help but feel faintly sick. She thinks about how Handong doesn’t look much older than her, how willing she had been, in that moment to just shoot, all her carefully constructed moral codes be damned. 

When Yoobin and Gahyeon come out later and they walk back to the docks, Yoohyeon resolves to be better this time. 

\---  
“I’m assuming you had a good time,” Minji says. 

Yoohyeon can almost say she’s gotten used to this. At least, the spaces between her shoulders don’t prickle as much when Minji appears anymore. More and more, she’s coming to expect the siren to approach her when she’s alone. The thought alone chills at her. 

“Yeah,” she says. She thinks briefly of the fortune teller's unnervingly cryptic nonsense and frowns. “Mostly.” 

“That’s good. I would’ve been bitterly disappointed if anything had happened to you or your friends.” 

Yoohyeon raises an eyebrow, but she’s turned half away from Minji. She wouldn’t put it past Minji’s all-knowing gaze to see it anyway. “Disappointed?” 

“In a sense, yes. It would be a waste for a face like yours to end up at the end of a spike.” 

Despite herself, Yoohyeon breathes a little easier and rolls her eyes. “Yes, because that’s exactly what the royal forces will be concerned with when they’re busy overseeing my execution. How best to display my face so there isn’t too much blood on it.” 

“Well,” Minji shrugs. “That is a consideration, yes.” Yoohyeon watches the water level dip below her neck and shivers. Everything about this feels wrong. She thinks about how terrified she was barely a week ago of this creature, how close she’d come to stepping into the water and doing something she’d regret. How easy everything feels now, talking, interacting. Acting like Minji is nothing more than a friend she has who lives underwater. Ha. 

The thing is--Yoohyeon had been drowning. Yoohyeon had been drowning, and Minji had been there. Minji had every right to drag her further down, had every _capability_ of--Yoohyeon doesn’t even want to think about it, but she _knows_ what sirens do with their prey. Even Minji herself hasn’t been shy about it. 

“Captain,” Minji says after a long pause. She tilts her head a little, staring at her with eyes that have always seemed to pierce too deeply into Yoohyeon. “Do you believe in fate?” 

The truth is, Yoohyeon does. Has always believed in some measure of destiny. When she’d wandered through the streets of her hometown and looked out over the fisherman bent over his skiff, she’d felt the sea call out to her. It was a kind of longing that drew her, grabbed at thin eight year old arms and _pulled_, and Yoohyeon had known, somewhere deep in her bones, in the back of her throat as she swallowed, that one day she wouldn’t be able to resist it. 

(She hadn’t been able to stop asking questions about it afterwards, but her mother had hushed her with soft washcloths and rough hands and the promise that her father would tell her all about it when he got home. Her mother always brought up her father when she wanted Yoohyeon to stop talking. In hindsight, it can’t have been all that surprising when she’d left to go find him by sea rather than land.) 

“Yes,” she says honestly. “I do.” 

Minji smiles, too close. “So do I. My kind place a very strong emphasis on predestination, in fact. In a foretold end.” 

“That sounds--restrictive,” she offers. “That there is a path already laid out for you that you cannot deviate from.” 

Minji tilts her head. The smile has not yet left her lips. “I find it comforting,” she says. “To know that somewhere out there, there’s someone waiting for me.” 

“I--I see.” Yoohyeon feels oddly lightheaded. Dizzy. It must still be the head wound acting up, even though the blood has long since dried. She doesn’t know what to possibly think. “I think--I think I’m going to retire for the night.” 

“Of course,” Minji says. One outstretched arm waves at her, and all Yoohyeon can think about is how long and sharp her nails are. “I wouldn’t want to disturb your rest any more than necessary.” 

When Minji disappears without prompting, hair rippling lightly as she dives deep into unknown regions, Yoohyeon breathes a sigh of relief. She turns to leave, fingers sliding over the thin railing. She thinks about how easy it would be to just slip through them. To fall, with barely a sound, into the sea, let it swallow her. 

“Who were you talking to?” Handong’s voice comes seemingly out of nowhere as she turns to descend below deck. The other girl is watching her, with innocent eyes that are almost entirely full of curiosity. Almost. 

Yoohyeon sighs. “No one. No one at all.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm really sorry this thing took so long. i drastically overestimated the amount of time real life shit would spare me to write for fandom, and so this update is both long overdue and also...sadly not really as quality as i would hope for. i've been home sick a few days, so i finally had the time to pull through with this part alksdaksdkj sorry it took me a month to write this bullshit

**Author's Note:**

> is the entire fic going to be this weird and creepy? uhh probably not? 
> 
> somebody help me


End file.
